A Snow(den) Job

Speaking of Ace of Spades, I highly recommend reading his take on the NSA scandal. Short version: Snowden may well be more than a little disingenuous.

That’s putting it kindly. The longer this goes on, the more it appears he may be full of crap:

Snowden’s backstory is not entirely accurate. Booz Allen says that his salary was 40 per cent lower than thought and a real estate agent says that his house in Hawaii was empty for weeks before he vamoosed. Does the fact that he only worked for three months with Booz Allen and the NSA suggest he was planning a hit and run all along – that he took the job with the NSA with the intention of stealing the documents?

Sure looks that way. I’ve really not known what to make of this latest development in ScandalPalooza, but the longer it goes on the less faith I have in Snowden’s good intentions and veracity. And Ace makes a really good point about the big picture:

I am jealously guarding the primacy of my favorite scandals, the IRS, James Rosen, and Benghazi, plus the perjury. I do not like other scandals sharing the limelight. I do not think they add to my favorite scandals. I think they steal spotlight. I think they crowd the stage.

And I want my Stars front and center.

Here’s the thing: The IRS scandal is plainly a partisan illegal political scandal done for corrupt motives.

Unconstitutional ones, too. This gets to the very heart of the American experiment.

The NSA scandal, if it pans out, is an illegal scandal, yes, but unlikely done for partisan or corrupt motives. It would be a case of overreach and constitutional violation, yes, but probably not with partisan or corrupt motives.

And it’s the latter that hang someone. Mistakes or differences of opinion do not. If the NSA turns out to be an overreach, but one done without partisan or corrupt motives… well, no one’s getting impeached for going too far to protect the American people from a terrorist attack.

George Bush got reelected on that platform, for crying out loud. He practically announced, “I intend to go too far.”

Yes. There is seriously frightening stuff going on, but the NSA kerfuffle ain’t one of them. In fact, it doesn’t surprise me at all. I kind of figured it was something they were already up to, since pretty much the whole world routes through American internet servers. It is not the same thing as collecting phone records on every single Verizon customer, but it’s quickly being conflated with it.

Don’t let yourselves get played. Benghazi didn’t burn over a stupid YouTube video, and the NSA tracing foreign internet traffic won’t bring down the Republic. A weaponized IRS, DOJ, and EPA turned against roughly half the population just might.